Taylor University bought 12 new vehicles in the last two years, Grounds Superintendent Kerry Shanebrook, said.
Shanebrook oversees landscaping around campus, as well as snow removal, trash and recycling and the motor pool.
“We bought six (vans) last year and two more vans this year and then four cars this year,” he said.
The new vans are Ford Transits, and the new cars are hybrid Toyota Camrys, Shanebrook said. The new vans cost about $43,000 – $45,000 each and the new cars about $29,000 each, he said. A Taylor alumnus gave Taylor a discount for the cars, he said.
The new vehicles were bought to replace older vehicles in the motor pool that had amassed over the allotted mile rate, Shanebrook said. The motor pool is a resource that allows Taylor University employees and students to borrow a car for Taylor-related or sponsored activities.
Traditionally, Taylor’s policy was to replace vehicles once they had collected 100,000 miles — approximately every five years, Shanebrook said. However, when Covid hit, the school was unable to keep replacing vehicles, he said.
This led to a reevaluation of the policy, and Taylor changed the replacement mark from 100,000 miles to 150,000 miles. He said this decision was made because the vehicles, despite being older models, still operated with over 100,000 miles.
“We kind of reviewed the policy at that time,” Shanebrook said. “Instead of going from 100,000 (miles) in five years, we upped it to 150,000 miles in seven years on these cars."
When vehicles are replaced, the old vehicles are sent to other places on campus or put up for silent auction, Shanebrook said.
This is because the vehicles still work when they’re “phased out,” Shanebrook said. They remove them from the motor pool because people tend to get nervous driving vehicles with higher mileage, he said.
Shanebrook said it’s mostly the Education Department that checks out cars from the motor pool to use. He said there are about 30 total vehicles in the motor pool, 10 of them vans and 20 cars.
The motor pool is consistently booked solid, Shanebrook said, so people who need to check out a vehicle should do it well in advance of when they need it.
The vehicles in the motor pool are only available for Taylor faculty, staff and students to use, Shanebrook said. For more information about the motor pool, students can go to their myTAYLOR account and search for “motor pool” using the search bar.
